


why worry about the stars?

by uphold



Category: TOMORROW X TOGETHER | TXT (Korea Band)
Genre: Comfort, Getting Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 19:55:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29407257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uphold/pseuds/uphold
Summary: Beomgyu pulls away after a second worth an entire eternity. It isn’t even a kiss but Soobin feels his heart take root in his body.
Relationships: Choi Beomgyu/Choi Soobin
Comments: 12
Kudos: 66





	why worry about the stars?

**Author's Note:**

> idc about the rest of the world its the 14th here [SO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS](https://twitter.com/bisexualsforkth/status/1327558739235258368?s=20)  
>    
> ty to [ane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hauntplace) for checking and double checking grammar and tenses for me ily. i have never been to s. korea in my life so every place mentioned is fictional. it's made up. listen to [unequivocal 2%,](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4fd84XpmnPX4TZLx0BdQJ3?si=e03e2e03cc3c4cd7) a collection of 5 songs i've been listening to while writing this.

  
  
  
  
  
  


_If the full moon loves you,  
_ _ Why worry about the stars?_

  
  
  
  
  


On a fine morning away from work, Soobin finds a box under plenty of other boxes in his closet.

He’s been trying to clean the place all afternoon, shoving unwanted things from his closet inside a larger, bigger box he can wrap up and set aside. Now that they’re finally moving away from their dingy little apartment the two of them had moved into fresh after college, he can’t ignore the growing heap of useless things he’d been too much of a hoarder to discard. He can’t even make any excuses for the toys and notebooks he’s carried with himself since he was five lying in another box deeper down that had resurfaced this afternoon.

Soobin can simply never let anything go, and while Beomgyu never comments on the habit, he knows it can get annoying. His mother used to threaten to throw his stuff out if he didn’t keep his closet clean and tidy and for what it’s worth, Soobin _did_ clean after such a threat even if it was done half-heartedly and procured more things to store than it did to throw away. 

So, while Beomgyu finalizes his new album drafts in his studio somewhere in the middle of a busy afternoon city, Soobin takes the day off from his own job and tries to clean their shared closet. It’s like the good old days, apart from the lack of his mother’s stingy gaze observing each one of his steps from the doorway. 

But there’s a tiny drawback. Here’s the thing, he’s spent almost half a day hypnotized by each memory that the boxes call to the surface. He’s pocketed pens and spoons he doesn’t want to throw away and he’s boxed some important stuff to mail back home. He’s even kept receipts because they’ve all got a date attached to their print as something relatively significant in their relatively (in the context of history) insignificant lives. Their comfortably medium-sized room is shed shabby in the duct tapes and paperboards. It’s ugly no matter how much he tries in his head to sugarcoat it, and at this point—having achieved little other than sitting in dust for almost five hours, he’s just impatiently scouring through his things and dumping them in whatever recycling box he thinks suits them best.

But the paranoia is setting in: _what if he throws an important memory into the trash?_ And then he’s pulling everything back out and sorting through them carefully. 

Beomgyu’s _much_ better suited for these things. Chaos and Beomgyu are synonymous with each other if you’ve known him for long enough, no matter how much he’s mellowed down through the years. And despite Beomgyu’s habit of regularly cleaning up his things when he’s done with it, he’s the one who creates the most mess. He wades through that mess just as easily, always better at organising things than Soobin will ever be. Now is a good time to step back and wait for Beomgyu to come and take over, but Soobin _doesn’t_ want to. 

He’s too curious about the box in front of him to move anyway. 

The box he’s stopped to stare at is not his. It’s not titled or labelled in his handwriting, and he doesn’t remember the dressing either. It isn’t any different from the others, judging from it’s green skin and worn out carton. But the fancy-ass duct tape, with it’s silly checkered red and white, is something he’d never own. And if it isn’t his, then it’s Beomgyu’s and if it’s Beomgyu’s ― who hasn’t kept a single box loaded with memories among all the cartons Soobin has cleared ― then it _means_ something. Beomgyu isn’t the kind of person to carry all that he needs to remember with him, he’s the type to set it down. To let time wash his brain off it only so that when he thinks about it again, he’ll do it through blurry little lenses and a sense of nostalgia that helps ground him to the flow of life. 

It’s an endearing, balancing habit to Soobin’s constant need for tangibility. 

There’s a neatly scrawled sentence right at the edge of the box. Soobin rungs his fingers over it, digs his trimmed nails in the ridges and curves of each letter. He doesn’t know it yet but his lips are tugged in an incredulous smile, the one you wear when you remember something you were sure you’d forgotten.

It reads: _the day 2% won over 98%._

He thinks, with a sharp cough (he’s swallowed some dust) and a shake of his head, that his boyfriend is the most sentimental asshole on earth. And that’s saying something, considering Soobin had been pretty sure until now that no one could beat him on that scale. He hoards spoons, for God’s sake. There’s no one more reluctant to throw things away than he is.

The sunlight from his window falls over the box diagonally, receding towards the edges. He digs his fingers under the hem and peels the duct tape off. It’s accompanied by an ugly sound of wear and tear and it makes his nails hurt by the way it bends awkwardly but in the end it’s worth it. The lid comes off easy. There’s a large sprayed sheet that reads _FRAGILE!_ over its contents and when Soobin pulls it off, he sees a number of nine polaroids saved among bottle caps and coins lying in battered pieces of foam. A red ribbon runs through its middle despite the fact that it isn’t actually holding anything and Soobin picks it up just so he can stare at the fact that Beomgyu _still has this ribbon_ dead in the face. 

He lets it drop in favour of picking the first polaroid he recognises and runs his fingers over the glazing sheen of a summer ten years ago. Beomgyu, for all his still stuttering declarations of love, delves deep into details in a way that it makes it so easy for people to love him after all. Soobin smiles at the polaroid ― the grey sky and the orange horizon ― the end of the world people in movies chase, the one that Beomgyu managed to bring to him right at his doorstep. 

The box stands as a memoir of memories that don’t open. Limelight, orange light, good light. For all the sentimentality points keeping the box gives Beomgyu, Soobin has always been the more sentimental one out of them both. He finds himself drifting back into that summer with ease, eyes closing and mind anchoring itself inside his body.

There’s a knock on his window and a wink in the evening. In his memory, that night never ends.

  
  
  
  


+

  
  
  
  


**19:45 | Jeonhan-ro, Seoul**

  
The story, this story, begins on a tiring day ten years ago. It’s 2017, sometime in the middle of the summer and there’s a city-wide blackout that would be mildly concerning if it isn’t for the fact that each one of his neighbours is out in the open in the afternoon light screaming at each other to let them know of any updates. Honestly, Soobin doesn’t even remember what the exact date was but Beomgyu does, for some reason. He’s scrawled the date on the back of the polaroid. It’s the 21rst of July. The sky is blue and warm and the streets are alight. Each reflective surface is pulsing golden with the ray of sunlight pooling over it. Humidity is on a promised twelve percent rise making it unfit to reside inside closed doors and as a rational human being, Soobin’s sitting outside on the veranda alongside the rest of his family. They’re all trying to fan themselves using various, completely polar ways which makes him laugh when he sees his brother use a textbook but really, _where_ are the battery-operated portable fans when you need them?

The breeze is that summer’s gift, cool through the foliage lined on their lawn. When it sweeps past them it brings a bout of relief that allows his brother to let his hands rest just for a moment so he can lie back on the terracotta swing in reprieve. Sometimes, when Sunwoo gets tired of aggressively waving his textbook back and forth, he pretends he’s beating Soobin up with it. That becomes their only source of entertainment in the afternoon.

Soobin sinks lower in the armchair, ignoring whatever his mother is telling him about _how to cope with stress in your final year_ as she sips her tea across them. The clay pots that hang low from the roof of the veranda sway gently in the breeze, the leaves of a money plant sprouting over their hem like water overflowing from a bucket. 

“The district office says they aren’t sure when the lights will be back on!”

Soobin sighs, sinks deeper into his chair. Beomgyu’s mother is seated on the porch of the house opposite theirs, talking to his mother by screaming what she has to say. All his neighbours collectively seem to think that gathering in one place will create too much body heat to tame so they’re doing that thing where they converse across lawns by yelling. Topping it all off, they aren’t even the only ones. Soobin, nineteen-years-old, is sitting in the middle of a coalition of five housewives discussing all sorts of things; from the boutique one of them has recently opened to the things their children are _supposed_ to be doing but _aren’t._

So far there’s been no sight of Beomgyu and that’s sort of getting on his nerves because like joy, when they suffer they suffer _together._ Beomgyu has been breaking all sorts of bro-codes this summer and this is just another broken rule Soobin is going to hold a grudge against for the rest of his life.

He’d switch his phone on and send him a text but he’s afraid that if the power doesn’t come back in a few more hours then he’ll need his phone more than ever and can’t afford to expend all the battery. So, Soobin sits there communicating with his brother in progressively louder sighs at every ridiculous opinion they hear. When it’s time to leave, the minute the sky is the brightest before the sun finally begins to set, he takes one last look at the other lawn. Seeing no sight whatsoever of Beomgyu still, he sighs and follows his family in. Beomgyu does this sometimes, disappears during the day. Soobin would definitely be worried if it wasn’t for Beomgyu’s inane habit to always come back _home,_ which in their language, means Soobin’s bed until morning arrives and he needs to sneak back out to his room. Soobin is fairly sure Beomgyu’s parents are aware that their son keeps him up at night at ungodly hours to play fucking _cards_ but neither of them have been reprimanded for it yet so they continue their tradition.

It’s close to eight pm when he hears of any sign of life from Beomgyu. His mother’s setting the tables and usually, she doesn’t yell at him until dinner but this time around she’d resigned herself to go back to work after a few moments of rest and had received the call just when she’d made to sit down. Soobin knows it’s Beomgyu immediately by the way his mother dumps the phone in his hand and glares at him. _If the phone dies because you’re taking too long,_ her eyes seem to say. _I’ll kill you._

Soobin takes the phone from her and goes out to the living room veranda, stands by the railing and swipes answer. “Hey?”

“Hyung!” Beomgyu’s voice is weirdly happy for a tragic, dying day. “Wipe that frown.”

Soobin whirls and hears Beomgyu laugh through the receiver. His frown deepens with an annoyed twitch of his lips. “Where are you?”

“Downstairs! Look!” And when Soobin does look, there he is ― he’s standing down the slope in front of the house under theirs. Behind him is an eerily empty road, darkness gnawing at the very end of it. But Beomgyu stands where he is like it’s no big deal, waving his hands over his head like they don’t tire and Soobin knows where this idiot’s been the whole day. He doesn’t even have to think. There’s a polaroid camera in his hand. “HI!”

“What are you doing?”

“They say the power won’t return till _like,_ tomorrow morning so do you wanna make the most of tonight?”

Choi Beomgyu says a lot of absurd things. Soobin has learned, with neat precision, how to tune it out. He says, “What?”

“I made an itinerary! Of all the places we can go to. Last roll I’ve got left, ten shots only!”

“Literally, _what_ are you talking about?” 

Soobin hears Beomgyu sigh, his eyes rolling like they do when he’s annoyed. “Hyung, let’s go on a field trip?” Beomgyu says. “Through the dark?”

“You mean like. Around the city? Right now?” 

“Yeah! Now! Or maybe later. Think about how fun it’s going to be. I’m going to document tonight, I’ve always wanted to do something like that and now that I get to, I’m not letting my chance go.”

“Beomgyu-yah, as inspiring as that was I have a life.”

“Okay,” Beomgyu nods and lifts his camera up. “Watch this.”

Soobin does watch him, his feeble attempt at a protest shut down when Beomgyu moves the camera up and clicks. It’s looking up their neighbourhood, up the slope, into the slightly lilac sky. He can hear the mechanical whirring of the film being scanned, emerging from the slot allotted like it’s being pushed up, through the phone. He watches Beomgyu pull it out and shake it, smile satisfied at the still white layer of _nothing_ and look back at him from where he stands down their house.

“I’ll wait for you at midnight hour, hyung? It’s almost seven-forty-five right now.”

Beomgyu lets the call drop just as Soobin’s mother yells at him from inside. He feels warmth seep into his toes, resignation spilling into his guts. Watching Beomgyu climb the fence into his house like a thief would instead of walking in through the gate like a normal person, he offers him the most rotten look he can amass. When Beomgyu turns around as he’s bracing himself to jump over the wall, he gives Soobin a grin twice the size of the sun.

He feels his heart thump, settle and skyrocket. 

Beomgyu jumps.

  
  
  
  


+

  
  
  
  
  


**12:02 | Hanlim Multi Arts High School**

The first place they go to, of course, is the basketball court Beomgyu _religiously_ divides his time for and will probably continue to do so even after they graduate. He’s kind of a jock per Soobin’s standards; letterman jackets over the uniform, shirt buttoned raggedly, tie loosening in bits and hair never sticking to one shade. It’s blonde right now and Soobin honestly wonders how he manages to get away with it _each time_ but he does. Somehow. 

Beomgyu comes knocking in at his window right when he’s falling asleep at eleven pm. Soobin wants to push him off the ledge for that because realistically speaking his parents wouldn’t even bat an eye if he pulled the spare key under one of the pots on their porch and walked in like he owned the place. They’ve known each other for _years_ now, longer than Soobin has known anyone else in their group of friends. His parents trust Beomgyu more than they trust him and that accounts for something, of course. And yet Beomgyu thinks jumping in through his window like a burglar would is the best form of greeting, laughing when Soobin screams his life away as though he’d expected it.

“I’ve been hanging out at the rink,” Beomgyu says when he sobers up. “Parkour is cool.”

“This is not parkour,” Soobin seethes, still in bed. “This is wanting to get arrested for trespassing.”

“Come on, aunty would never call the police on me.”

“Try this again and _I_ will.” 

Beomgyu’s a _terrible_ best friend, Soobin decides. He asks if Soobin wants to follow him out the window as they leave and Soobin has to summon all that he has in him to not physically drag Beomgyu out through the doorway like a ragdoll _._ With the patience of a saint, he smiles through his teeth and gestures a quick slice across his neck. Beomgyu laughs like it’s the funniest thing in the world before following Soobin out. 

Still, Soobin’s poor little traitor of a heart beats so fast he’s afraid it’s going to pluck itself out of his chest. In hindsight, maybe spending a really dark night with Beomgyu out open in the city where the possibilities to do things are endless hasn’t been the _brightest_ idea he’s had yet but he’s never actually been able to refuse anything Beomgyu’s asked of him and this little _outing_ of theirs is one of those things.

Yeonjun used to say, with a teasing lilt, that what Beomgyu said Soobin did.

He was right, more than he knew. Soobin's aching heart, fluttering in the most inadequate of all moments, seemed like the best way to explain it. He didn’t know how to cover most of it in words, just an endless need taped to the space between his ribs.

Beomgyu suggests a motorbike and there’s _no_ way Soobin is going to sit behind Beomgyu on that thing. “No,” he says immediately. “Give me the key.”

“Come on, hyung!―”

“No! The last time I gave you the keys you―”

“I’ve gotten better!”

“No, absolutely _not._ ” Soobin is stubborn on quite a few things when he has to be. For his own sanity and safety, he is not going to let someone like Beomgyu drive a bike around a mostly dark city. Beomgyu lives for the adrenaline, to feel the rush and chase of the wind burning in his lungs. The last time he’d been out on a motorbike in the middle of the night, he’d landed in the hospital for broken ribs. Soobin is so not in the mood to get himself crushed tonight. “You either give me the key, or I leave.”

“No! Fine!” Beomgyu pulls the key out of the back pocket of his denim, handing him the keys. His hair is hidden underneath his black hoodie, Soobin notices in an irrational moment. He looks good, like that. “I hate you so much.”

Soobin snaps back to reality and takes the keys, fingertips toeing at the edge of Beomgyu’s. “Where to?”

Beomgyu pretends to think like Soobin doesn’t know he has an entire itinerary in his back pocket. “School.”

“School?” Soobin asks, not sure if he heard right. Beomgyu usually hates the place.

“School,” Beomgyu affirms and well, so that’s where they go. 

The bike, Soobin doesn’t know a lot about motors but he’s sure it’s a Honda, has a raised seat behind. When Beomgyu settles behind him, he has no qualms about stapling himself to Soobin’s back like he’s born to do so. Soobin can feel each curve and dip of Beomgyu’s chest behind his back, even though he’s wearing a leather jacket thick enough to blaze through the wind. It’s absolutely tragic. He thinks he sort of wants to die and he wonders if Beomgyu can _hear_ his heartbeat quickening as he rapidly reaches that conclusion. Beomgyu lets his head lean on Soobin’s shoulder, breathing into the crevice of his neck.

When Beomgyu speaks, Soobin feels his heart melt in his mouth. “I’d borrowed this bike from my dad because I thought you’d sit behind me like this, but I guess this is fine too. I like this better.”

Soobin doesn’t even have anything clever to say that. His jams the ignition on and stutters a quiet, “Are you even human Choi Beomgyu?” Beomgyu hands him his helmet and Soobin watches him tug his own on before wearing the one given to him. Anything else Beomgyu wants to say is swallowed by the roar of the bike coming to life.

In the complete dark of the city, the golden light that the bike churns helps them see the immediate part. Some of the houses in their neighbourhood are still powered by their personal generators, those that do not depend on the grid backup. But the rest of the city, the towering office buildings and the avenues, they’re all blanketed in an eerie dark straight out of an apocalyptic story. Soobin isn’t really a big fan of the dark, he’s creeped out in spaces with liminal light in itself but Beomgyu loves things like these. Soobin has heard him go on at length about how pretty the five-second power cuts in the middle of the night in winter are. He says there’s something about the fog and the dark cutting through the blinking red backup lights and creating a halo around it. Soobin understands the sentiment but given such a situation, Soobin would just close his eyes and go back to sleep.

Beomgyu, however, whips up his entire collection of cameras, decides which one will suit the dim light best and takes at least two pictures in the gap of five seconds. His room is just a collection of all such pictures, they line his walls and are tied to a string over his curtains. Beomgyu calls it a collection of photographs from _Places Where Time Runs Thin_ and really, Soobin gets the appeal but he’d personally never do something like that.

Soobin knows he’d been out in the afternoon doing the same thing. In his defence, Beomgyu is pretty good at it too. There isn’t anything morbid about taking still pictures in empty buildings, unlike what his parents seem to think ― but there’s an artful way to which Beomgyu captures these things that even his parents can’t deny. He’s a prodigy with a lens, that’s true. 

That’s why he finds it odd when Beomgyu holds the polaroid camera towards him as soon as they reach the school. Soobin pulls his helmet off and raises an eyebrow at Beomgyu, taking it from him. “What?” he asks.

“Nothing.” Behind Beomgyu stands the towering eastern gate of Hanlim Arts, a fresh iron mascot designed to weave into it. “I want you to take one picture of each place we go to tonight, just one ― remember. We’ve got a few more places to go and nine shots left, so choose your pick but do it wisely.” 

“You’re letting me take the pictures?”

“Sure.” 

Before Soobin can say anything, Beomgyu turns and begins to pad slowly on the iron rods holding the gate. Soobin watches him push himself up and over, glancing occasionally at the empty security booth wondering where the guards are and how they could leave their spot at such an eventful time of the night. Beomgyu seems to read his mind because he grins, nods to his right. Soobin looks in the direction to find the a guard dozing off near the eastern entry inside the school building.

By the time Soobin is done gawking at the guard, Beomgyu pulls himself up and over the landing. Soobin groans because the jump from up above was _high_ and his legs don’t have it in them to even try doing something like that. But he catches Beomgyu smiling the way he does before he’s going to taunt Soobin for something and Soobin rushes to climb before he can open his mouth. Getting the upper half of his feet to find something to stick on is a frankly ridiculous ordeal and he looks like an idiot straddling the gate.

“What?” he says when Beomgyu stands there. His face is the perfect picture of a mocking stance embodied in a man. “I’m not small like you, it’ll take me some time.”

“Sure hyung,” Beomgyu says. “Or I can just open the gate?” 

Soobin splutters uselessly at Beomgyu as he walks closer to the smaller gate near the security booth, pulling the latch.

He’s never felt like a bigger idiot.

Making his way through such mortification isn’t easy, but sooner or later he's done it. He’s walking beside Beomgyu in animated silence. The school is ducked in the same deep dark of the city, a slightly more negative glow to this place than any other. Soobin scratches the back of his neck and frowns, “Don’t you hate school?”

“I do,” Beomgyu replies, without hesitation. “Place makes my skin crawl. But, you know, it’s our last year and I won’t ever see this place again.”

“Does that bother you?”

“Not really.” Beomgyu hesitates. “I don’t remember much about this place. I just know I’ll miss the basketball court.”

“The basketball court? Is that where we’re going?” Beomgyu’s jock habits also include active participation in athletic sports like football and basketball. Soobin has been suspecting he’s more attached to the basketball court for a numerous number of reasons, first and foremost being that Beomgyu is _always_ ditching class to hang out under the Big Broken Tree that spreads over half of the court and second, there’s a tiny wedge between the courtyard wall behind it that’s easy to cross if you ever _desperately_ want to leave school and not get caught. 

Beomgyu kicks a stray twig and Soobin hears it crunch, for a minute he says nothing. Then, he turns around in the moonlight and smiles. It falls silvery and pale, a little sad. “You’ve got your camera ready right?”

The court is only a few steps from the eastern gate, right behind the Junior’s Quad. Soobin nods, gripping the blue-skinned polaroid camera carefully. “Yeah.”

“Take your best picture,” Beomgyu says, turns, and starts walking. “It doesn’t have to be something cool, just make it memorable. Make it something you’d keep.”

Soobin wants to point out that he hoards _everything_ but doesn’t want to turn this into an argument because neither of them knows how to live any point down. Instead, he says, “What’s this advent supposed to be? Like a Makuna Hatata thing?”

Beomgyu laughs and Soobin knows instantly that he’s said it wrong. “What― what is it? Is it something else―”

“Hyung shut up,” he cries. “You’re embarrassing, oh my god. Hakuna Matata!”

“That’s what I said!”

“You said Makuna Hatata!”

He refuses to blush out of sheer indignation. A virtually two feet tall dwarf does _not_ get to laugh at him about things like these. He makes mistakes! They happen! They happen to everyone! _Soobin_ doesn’t laugh when Beomgyu falls face-first a second into class because he’s been up all night and is half-dozing off, half-walking. He _doesn’t._ He offers him a hand and helps him to his feet. He’s a _good_ friend. What does Beomgyu do? Laugh. A terrible best friend.

“Hyung I can practically hear you making up validating stories inside your head just to fight off the embarrassment,” Beomgyu says when he’s done laughing. “For the record, you would do the same thing. Just in case you were trying to tell yourself you’re the honourable one out of the two of us.”

“Shut up,” Soobin mutters. He looks down, pretty sure Beomgyu’s got an uncanny ability to read minds. “Walk in silence, one more word and I’m going back home.”

“Sure. Find your way back in the dark. You’d be scared five minutes in and then you’ll go _Beomgyu! Choi Beomgyu! I’m so sor―_ ”

“I swear to god Beomgyu, I will not think twice before pushing you into the reservoir.”

“Do it. I dare you. Do it.”

He’s _insufferable._ Soobin stops replying to his taunts entirely and he still goes on. Despite their voices mostly hushed he’s pretty sure anyone can hear them if they try hard enough. He half wants to point that out to Beomgyu and ask him to shut the fuck up but they’re already close to the court and Beomgyu seems to get more excited the faster they close the space. Soobin pulls his phone out of his pocket, switching it on. He might as well switch it on right now and hope that it’s promised fourteen-hour battery life works than continue to wander in the dark with no reception. He has _informed_ his mother where he’s going to be tonight, of course, but that doesn’t mean she won’t try to call in to check every two minutes. 

Judging from the state of the still dark world and the emergency white pole-lamp switched on over the basketball court, Beomgyu was right when he told Soobin the power wouldn’t be back till next morning.

So, they really have the whole night. 

What is Soobin going to even _do_ with all of this? 

Beomgyu, on a normal day, is an unbearably light presence. Soobin doesn’t know when he began noticing it, when he forewent all precautions and thought about how pretty Beomgyu looked with his hair longer than usual tucked behind his ears. On a night like this, Beomgyu’s still so very pretty and Soobin can’t even see him but he can feel how excited he is for this ordeal. This night. Tonight. It makes something settle in his stomach, like a stone. It anchors itself to the lining of his body and doesn’t let go.

“Isn’t it weird,” Beomgyu says. 

“What is?”

“The fact that I hate this place but I’ll miss it too.”

“Will you?” Soobin frowns. “Will you miss it?”

“I,” Beomgyu pauses. There’s a terse silence and then Beomgyu’s shaking his head. He’s opening the mesh gates of the court with nimble fingers, lack of locks and Soobin watches him do so with little tending curiosity. He knows what each one of Beomgyu’s silences mean because as loud as he normally seems, there are these lapses in his chaos that fester in between them like a still bleeding wound. Soobin knows what Beomgyu wants to say even if he bites his tongue and keeps it in, it’s a habit that's come with their years of knowing each other. _Still,_ he finds this particular silence odd. It’s not cold or warm, it’s just mellow. Like, Beomgyu doesn’t know the answer himself. So, Soobin doesn’t press for Beomgyu to tell him what’s on his mind. What he does, instead, is follow him inside the basketball court that looks eerier at night, stray twigs crunching beneath his feet he hadn’t even realised were in his way. 

Pooling open in the middle of a forest, most of the open grounds in their school cut through foliage. The court does too, but it’s tucked away in the farthest corner where nature is at its thickest. There’s an orchard a few steps away that is planted around the area of their school, a tangerine orchard. He can smell the citrus in the air alongside the smell of earth. It’s unnerving, at it’s best ― the orange hoops on the baskets glitter in the moonlight.

“You know, so far from the city,” Beomgyu says. “It doesn’t even look like there’s been a blackout. It looks the same.”

Soobin turns and finds some truth in the statement. The only noticeable difference is the skyline that isn’t dusted in golden city lights, otherwise, the emergency lights switched on across their school campus make everything look the same. He feels a breeze brush by him, it’s summer but it feels so cold. It’s an inexplicable feeling, watching the school stretching before them endlessly. He is here every day, _every day,_ and yet it feels like he’s looking at it for the first time, each curve in its surface, each radiant red halo.

“I think I get it now,” Beomgyu says. “I’ll miss these moments.”

Soobin turns to him once again, watches the way the breeze ruffles his hair back. “Hmm?”

“I’ll miss not being responsible for myself and I’ll miss having a day where I could stay in my own bubble without any responsibilities and you know,” he gestures, with his hands, at the basket behind him. “I’ll miss the smell of this place, I’ll miss what it was like sitting underneath one of the trees in the orchard in the middle of the day and I’ll miss making up fascinating, eerie stories about ghosts and spirits here that don't really exist but creep those kids out nevertheless.”

“We don’t know if we’ll get this time again,” Soobin says. “And we don’t know if we get to choose.”

“Exactly.” Beomgyu nods. “It’s insane that life keeps changing like that and we don’t get to go back and do it over again, don’t get to live these moments again.”

“Yeah. Like, when you get ready for party and don't know what to expect and you find someone you like and you dance with them. You have a great time, or maybe you didn't, but you don’t know if you’ll still be with them at the end of the night and you wish you could go back and try again.”

Beomgyu smiles, all teeth. “Yeah. And it’s also like ― _but_ you danced.”

“But you danced,” Soobin repeats, grins back.

The urge hits him then. It feels like it’s the right thing to do, all of a sudden. The weight of the camera in his hands make his fingers twitch, the sight of Beomgyu in front of him all silver and pale in the night, the woods around them growing but not unfamiliar. It’s things like these, Soobin realizes in a moment of clarity, that make Beomgyu want to take pictures. These moments he’ll never get to live again as tangibly as he’s living now, moments that will sooner or later be touched with the sepia glow of a distant memory. And the way it’s memorable to carry it with you along the way. To trap it in a photograph. 

Soobin moves the camera to his eye, switches it on and finds himself looking at the basket on the opposite end of the court through the viewfinder. He half expects Beomgyu to stop him, remind him that they’ve got only nine more shots left. But the berate never comes. Soobin takes one last glance at the way the light of the moon forms a gap of shadows on the glinting orange metal of the basket, the way the sky is so _blue_ behind it. The stars, so many of them, littered around in the background and the top of the trees, a bit of the foliage, weaving its way into the frame. Everything that makes tonight the night it is.

He clicks the shutter and hears it whir. Once. Twice. Then the film is rolling and he’s pulling it out.

“Was it worth it?” Beomgyu asks. He almost sounds curious.

Soobin stares at the picture in his hand, the faint outline forming already. “Yeah. It was.”

“I’m glad.”

  
  
  
  


+

  
  
  
  
  


**01:10 | Halmeoni’s Noodles**

It’s a miracle to find any source of light in the city tonight. They’ve been wandering around in the dark for almost an hour now and it’s been ridiculous. The city feels lonely, with the covered windows of the apartments and silence blanketing each slope and alley. There’s a tangible sort of isolation present in the air around and unlike Beomgyu, Soobin isn’t fascinated by such things. If he lets himself think about the isolation he will end up freaking himself out and that’s not what he aims to do tonight. It’s just… _boring_ and Soobin is exhausted having been awake for so long past bedtime already. He wants to go home but he doesn’t think Beomgyu would appreciate the idea. Despite the _‘being stranded after an apocalypse as the last human beings alive’_ vibes this city gives them, Beomgyu is still interested in every little nook and corner, the glowing panes of emergency red lights and the wilderness around. He tries his luck at keying an empty supermarket open but gets to no such spheres of success. He trudges further anyway, still scouring around on sheer momentum while wandering aimlessly down the block. At least, it’s a place they recognise. If they end up straying too far from here then Soobin swears to God he’ll be taking Beomgyu home to acquaint him with a chopping board.

Completely oblivious to the violence in Soobin’s head, Beomgyu continues to hum a tune. Soobin assumes it’s from one of his newer tracks, wouldn’t be surprised if the sole reason he wants to explore the city at _night_ and in the middle of the blackout is because he wants to come up with more morbid inspiration.

It isn't out of the ordinary for him to do such a thing. Beomgyu’s parents let him go on little adventures like these if it isn’t at the cost of his grades. Which it isn’t, mysteriously. Soobin doesn’t know when he gets the time to study or if he even sleeps, he just knows that unless Beomgyu wants to talk to you, you’ll never be able to find him. 

Beomgyu stops walking the second Soobin looks at him, eyes widening. “Soobin, are you hungry?” he asks. 

Soobin frowns. “Why?”

“Look,” Beomgyu points at a stall a little away from them, brightly lit with its own backup power and selling hot, _warm_ food. Soobin sees the corn dogs neatly arranged in a row by it and is immediately very much into the idea he knows Beomgyu is going to suggest. “Let’s get some cheese corn dogs―”

“Okay!”

“As expected, _Subinie hyung_ ,” Beomgyu muses, watching Soobin leave him behind in an attempt to get to the stall faster. “When it comes to food, he is faster than God himself.”

“Shut it.”

“No.”

Soobin can’t find it in him to be mad at Beomgyu when he offers to pay for the corn dogs. The second love of Soobin’s life, as everyone else is aware, is food. The first one is his dream ― and it’s ridiculous, but it’s his dream, and it will be his dream even if he never achieves it ― to become an idol. The thought, like any other thought, doesn’t follow any rhyme or reason. When he watches the old lady behind the counter wrap up their corn dogs in a box and sees Beomgyu smile at her, making the kind of casual conversation that comes to him with ease, Soobin feels awfully nostalgic about everything in his life. 

Maybe it’s the night or perhaps, the isolation. The buildings around them tower, larger than life, radiating the daunting comfort only stability can emit. He thinks, in future, he’d like to live in a neighbourhood like this one. Earn a stable life, have kids, come home before the sun sets and watch a movie with his family the way his dad never got to. He thinks about his dreams, gaze sweeping past the oily residue of the tables around them, and feels himself ache a bit about every chance he’s let go to reach that dream. He’s already nineteen, doesn’t have enough years in his pocket to even consider being a trainee. If he’d been a few years younger then he could’ve tried, could’ve made peace with his ambitions and realised sooner that what he wants is to be on a stage, wants the spotlight on him as he sings a song he _wants_ to sing. 

But wanting something and needing something aren’t the same thing. And it’s too late now, anyway, to think about it. Still, he’ll cherish that dream till it changes. He’ll keep it close to his heart.

“You’ve got that look on your face that says you’re thinking about something stupidly sentimental out of nowhere again.”

Soobin wants to whack him over the head, walking wad of cash or not. Beomgyu is a _terrible_ best friend and he won’t let him have even a minute of peace. “I was thinking about my dreams,” he huffs, watching Beomgyu take the parcel from the lady and pay her back. “How do you even know? You didn’t even look at me.”

“I think food makes you sentimental hyung,” Beomgyu says. “And I don’t need to look at you to know what you’re thinking about.”

And he’s right about that, isn’t he? They’ve known each other for long enough. They walk to a round table underneath an umbrella, loose cobble creaking beneath their feet, and don’t even have to argue about who is going to take which seat. Beomgyu is right, because he’s always right. Food does make him sentimental, but company ― company makes him sentimental too.

The sentiment right now stems from Beomgyu, from the way they know each other without having to say anything. The way he’s out here, in the middle of the night, and his mother has only called twice because she trusts Beomgyu to keep them both safe. The way he’s out here, in the middle of the night, doing something he doesn’t necessarily like because Beomgyu finds it interesting.

The way Beomgyu knows just which decoration of the corn dog he likes more than the other, skips it and picks another one down the row.

 _Beomgyu_ makes him sentimental, the same way the still silence of tonight does. His thoughts go back to the first time he met him, watching the Beomgyu from the present drag his chair as loudly as he can till it screeches and makes way for him to sit. It’s like that afternoon, the revelation that comes. Back when he realised that he was finally nearing the part of his life where he couldn’t make excuses for flawed plans anymore, when he realised that all his life he’d wished he could grow up and become an adult only to realise that now that he was finally going to be one, he lost his childhood in the time spent waiting for it. Each of his days, counted and ridiculously packed. Growing up for the sake of it, unlike how it is in movies. Or maybe, precisely how it is in movies.

Some days stand out, replaying in totality ― others are blurred by the affection he traps inside his ribs. It threatens to leak out of it with every little flutter, each fondly framed memory of Beomgyu he has.

His mother had been the first person to catch on to it, as mothers always are. One afternoon after school, Beomgyu had passed out in his lap. Soobin hadn’t even noticed his mother standing in the corner watching him play with the strands of Beomgyu’s dark hair absentmindedly. Even if he’d not known this then, when she knocked on his door and mouthed _do you want something to eat?_ with a smile, she’d meant it as easy acceptance. She’d known it before he did, a foreign glint of amusement in her eyes every time she looked at the two of them since then. 

Soobin and Beomgyu weren’t always _Soobin and Beomgyu_ , they were once _just_ Soobin and _just_ Beomgyu a week into middle school. Soobin, in his circle of friends he had known since he was a kid. Beomgyu, the new quiet boy who kept to himself in one quiet corner with a lost twist of his mouth. It reminded him so much of himself that Soobin took the first step. He greeted him before he did, invited him to lunch not waiting for Beomgyu to suggest, even though Soobin had never done anything like that before. He wasn't good at taking first steps, preferred to let other people dictate his plans. In hindsight, it’s funny how Soobin is the introvert of the pair because despite being an extrovert and usually extremely loud, Beomgyu is always hesitant when it comes to new things. Soobin is the first one, even after all these years, to coax him into conversations.

He’d been wrong about Beomgyu of course. Beomgyu was nothing like him. Despite being shy and fumbling with new people, Beomgyu was a thunderstorm that given an inch would take a mile. He was someone Soobin had known all his life and kept inside the space between his heart for most.

“Beomgyu,” he says and for once Beomgyu sobers by hearing the edge in his voice. It’s in the way he says his name, he guesses. Beomgyu recognises him by tone alone, by the lilt of each word. “Do you think we’ll fall out of touch, after school?”

“I knew you were dumb.” It’s told in a way one would tell a joke, and to anyone else maybe it would’ve been. Not to Soobin, however. Soobin knows what Beomgyu is trying to do here even if he masks it as a taunt. “But I didn’t think you lacked practicality. We live right across from each other, we’re bound to bump at some point even if we stop talking forever ― you know? We’ll grow up and grow out, but we’ll still see each other at some point.”

That’s the thing, Soobin wants to say. _I don’t want to be an at some point to you_. He doesn’t want to grow up and he doesn’t want to grow out of these days and nights he’s spent with Beomgyu. He doesn’t know when it started, how he began noticing ― but he did and it’s hard to let go of it now. It’s harder, in a way, when you acknowledge what you’re feeling. And Soobin has, over the dinners where his mother treats Beomgyu more like her own son than she does Soobin, over their gaming sessions when Beomgyu breaks into his house in the middle of the afternoon screaming about a new level he reached, over the nights when they stay cuddled in Beomgyu’s bed watching something extremely horrifying on Netflix because Beomgyu isn’t ever unnerved by anything. 

Soobin has been thinking about Beomgyu and he _knows_ why. 

He watches Beomgyu pick the box open again despite still eating his share. The way he’s settled into a metal chair makes him look small even if he isn’t actually that small. He bites into his corn dog, speaks through the cheese filling which should be disgusting but isn’t. It’s kind of cute. “Besides hyung, you know what they say ― the probability of meeting someone is never zero.”

“What _someone_ do you even mean?” Soobin laughs, takes his own seat opposite Beomgyu. “They say the chance of meeting _the one_ in your life is like seventeen percent high if you go to the gym.”

“Ah, that’s why I can’t ever seem to find someone I love, damn.”

“Shut up.” But he’s laughing. 

“You know hyung,” Beomgyu says. “I think there’d be like a ninety-eight percent chance we never met. And I know it’s weird, but I’m glad we met by two percent.”

And that makes him laugh harder just because he doesn't want to think about the implication of Beomgyu comparing meeting him to meeting the _one._ “Do you even know how statistics work, Mathematician Choi Beomgyu-shi?”

“Hey! I studied a bit in school, don’t―”

“Studied a _bit_ ,” he repeats and now it’s Beomgyu’s turn to laugh. “Sure, I agree. Very glad about the two percent.”

Beomgyu grumbles something that sounds like _weren’t you the one all sad about never seeing me again_ and Soobin snorts at that, moves to take his corn dog. Something makes him stop midway, the weight of the polaroid camera in his pocket.

The picture, in hindsight, isn’t very symbolic or very neat. It’s of the people, lined outside the stall called Halmeoni’s Noodles and a light so bright in the middle of the night it outshines everything around them ― the apartment buildings, the cobble and the sky, and Beomgyu’s face, cheeks stuffed with food and eyes twinkling with humour. 

It’s something, alright. And that matters. 

  
  
  
  


+

  
  
  
  


**01:30 | Unknown Pavement**

Ninety-percent over two percent is such an entirely stupid rhetoric that Soobin doesn’t know how or why Beomgyu came up with it, but it sticks with him after they’ve long since deserted Halmeoni’s Noodles and are now idly waddling in a generator-powered avenue filled with bakeries that waft the sweet smell of freshly baked buns. They’re still working, even at such an hour in the night, and there are still people sitting inside ducking in the light to face their laptops and textbooks. Beomgyu’s in front of him, talking about some kind of show he’d been watching a few days ago and Soobin is pretty sure he’s heard the same identical story somewhere else but he doesn’t particularly remember or care.

He’s thinking about Beomgyu.

And well― himself. But mostly Beomgyu. Every time Beomgyu pauses his narration to look at him, Soobin is afraid he’s going to blurt out some senseless question like: _do you remember when we first met? You’d been so quiet, so shy._ It’s the ninety-eight percent analogy, he blames the ninety-eight percent analogy. He wouldn’t think about _Beomgyu_ or _Beomgyu in relation to him_ if Beomgyu had not implied that he was grateful he’d met Soobin as one would be if they met their _significant other_. And maybe he’s reading too much into it but he can’t help it. It’s so bizarre to him that Soobin is hyper-focusing on a detail as worthless as this when it comes to an airhead like Choi Beomgyu. Beomgyu doesn’t need a reason to say things, he just does. And Soobin ― he’s behaving like a boy with a _crush._

Soobin doesn’t particularly remember when he started calling it a crush. He thinks it was last year after Hueningkai had relentlessly teased him about being whipped and said, “Who would’ve known, Soobin hyung becomes absolutely useless with a crush.” 

So, Soobin has a crush on Beomgyu and it isn’t even his fault. In all honesty, he’d thought it would warm over pretty soon. But it didn’t. He’d first noticed there was something wrong with his perception of Beomgyu when Beomgyu had hit puberty hard in grade eight and not only did he shoot up and grow more defined, he’d turned prettier. And he _kept_ getting prettier. Every year past till now, Beomgyu kept getting the prettiest Soobin had ever seen him and it was _hard_ to associate himself with him without hoping for something more. 

It was hard and he was just a boy with a crush. He hoarded everything Beomgyu ever gave him. Pencils, erasers, sharpeners ― the speech he’d written for Soobin’s extempore session in grade nine because Soobin was absolutely hopeless at small talk and Beomgyu, coincidentally, was not. It was written on a sketching sheet that Beomgyu often drew on. It had a lion in one corner, a lake in the other and few more rough doodles of faces and armors in between. The speech was written in black pen, starting with a clean introduction and nudging towards violent threats to bullshit on _so and so_ topics. He’d gotten a surprising B grade on it, and after school was over, he’d folded the sheet neatly and tucked it in the drawer of his desk by the journals he doesn’t use anymore but is too paranoid to leave all alone. It’s still lying there, and if he goes home now he can still find it and pick it up; runs his hands over the neat, rounded scrawls of Beomgyu’s handwriting and lament the stupid crush he has.

And it isn’t even his fault. It isn’t even _his fault._

He pulls the camera up. It’s too dark to see Beomgyu in the viewfinder but he clicks anyway. Right then and there, when Beomgyu is looking at a bakery animatedly and Soobin is standing behind him at a little distance unable to stop thinking about him. He wishes he could walk up to him now, kiss him and tell him everything he’s thinking about. _Did you mean it that way?_ he wants to ask. _Did you mean meeting me was like meeting the one for you?_ He doesn’t do any of those things because he’s fundamentally a coward, but he thinks of how they go over in his head when the shutters click. 

The flash makes Beomgyu turn and gawk. “Hey! You could’ve at least warned―”

“What does the rest of your two percent mean?” 

“What?”

Soobin nears him, hands him the film he’s pulled. He tucks a strand behind his head in a moment of grandiosity and cringes inside when he realises what he’s done. But it leaves Beomgyu speechless anyway, making him pull his shoulders tightly together. “What does the two percent mean, in your ninety-eight percent chance we would’ve never met theory?”

“Does it bother you so much?” Beomgyu asks quietly.

“Just answer the question.”

“History is doomed and you're my best friend.” The way he says it is so sincere Soobin knows whatever thought he’d followed to reach such a conclusion wasn’t a good one. Beomgyu is funny and Beomgyu is loud and Beomgyu is _too_ hard on himself. He doesn’t know, even now, if Beomgyu will tell him what he’s been thinking, but he hopes to stay long enough to find out. “And I know nothing about statistics. I just know that having someone like you in my life was probably a chance of less than one percent, but I want to believe it’s two. An unequivocal two percent.”

“Why?” he breathes. Warm yellow light panes across Beomgyu’s face in bits. 

“You know, hyung,” Beomgyu says. “For someone so smart you’re quite stupid sometimes.”

Something inside clicks. _Oh._

  
  
  
  


+

  
  
  
  


**03:00 | In the Middle of Nowhere**

Soobin prides himself on not being a delinquent. He's happy to tell this to anyone who asks that despite being around Yeonjun and Beomgyu ninety-percent of his time, most of his classmates do not consider him a delinquent. He’s a good person and he helps people and he doesn’t take risks, not even if they’re calculated. Unlike the duo, Soobin is responsible and careful with what he has. He might have been the only one with brain cells in their group had Taehyun not existed. Which is not to say that Taehyun’s sobering presence isn’t something he’s not thankful for. He is quite glad Taehyun exists, just so he can relish in those few moments of not having to be the most responsible one. Taehyun is their balancing force, truthfully. Sometimes Soobin thinks they wouldn’t know what to do without him.

The point here is, Soobin isn’t reckless. Beomgyu is. But staying with a boy like Beomgyu for so long is bound to pollute him too, as the faculty in their school always say ― and here he is, three am, a can of spray paint in his hand near a community wall he is _sure_ they aren’t supposed to be touching. _The faculty were right,_ he thinks with a daunting sense of horror. This can get them arrested for vandalism but Beomgyu is as unbothered as they come, cleanly spraying a small _eat the rich_ in one corner of it. If Soobin goes by odds and the size of the avenue that is clearly not abandoned, just in a power cut, he’ll give them ten ― maybe fifteen ― minutes before they get caught. But Beomgyu had dragged him to a department store a few steps down the block and made him pay for a pack of spray paints so here they are.

Soobin is truly feeling the spirit of _Young, Dumb and Broke_ playing on his phone that thrums in a quiet radiostatic from the speakers. Beomgyu wanted to vandalise with vibe and he never carries around his own phone so he bothered Soobin till he gave him his. Soobin sighs and he sounds miserable, but Beomgyu’s excited about this and _nothing_ Soobin will say will deter him from whatever he wants to do. 

“Where is this place even?” Soobin asks.

Beomgyu keeps spraying the wall as he replies. “Hyacinthus Avenue. Rich people, they can get this stuff cleaned up. We’re in the centre of the city by the way,” he turns and raises an eyebrow at him, “you do know that right?”

“Of course, I do!” He did _not._ “What do you take me for?”

“A fool.” Beomgyu smiles, sweetly, and goes back to work. “And, judging by the way you aren’t trying to participate in this, a coward too.”

“I’m not a _coward._ I have _selective_ interests.”

“Sounds like something a coward would say.”

Soobin wants to threaten Beomgyu’s life again, but instead, he does what he finds the most reasonable ― tries to tackle him from behind. Thing is, Beomgyu is small. Most people find him small because he has a narrow frame even if he is actually taller than the average crowd. When you try to flip him over or tussle around with him, you’ll find that your arm can cover his entire waist in one go. It makes him light and considerably easy to pick up and throw around. The fact that Soobin is strong when he wants to be is just a plus point. So Beomgyu's scream when Soobin nears him with a slightly unhinged grin is completely understandable. He tries to duck and escape Soobin’s warpath but doesn’t manage to get too far because Soobin has a stronghold on his neck that he can’t pull himself out of. He’s far weaker than Soobin to try so he just stays there nuzzled in the crook of his arms, laughing without a care of discovery while begging for mercy simultaneously.

“Sorry! Sorry― _hyuuung_ ―”

“Shut up,” Soobin says, unbothered. “Should’ve considered this when you were annoying me all this while. I was sleepy a few moments ago and you stole my corn dogs! You’ve been annoying me the _whole_ night.”

“I was wrong! I won’t do it ― _AH!”_

Soobin relents after a few more moments of relishing in Beomgyu’s fruitless struggle because Beomgyu starts biting his arms. Soobin thinks he’s like a cat to a fault. Even the biting. _Especially_ , the biting. 

Beomgyu goes back to spray painting after giving him a dirty look and just when Soobin thinks he can ease up a bit, Beomgyu writes a whole _BG_ in English like he’s signing his autograph. Contrary to popular opinion, Soobin thinks Beomgyu might _want_ to earn a criminal record. “Hyung,” he says. “Do you know what’ll be fun?”

“What?” Soobin asks, dreading the answer. Beomgyu turns, outline dusted in silver and the emergency red. “Do I even want to know?”

Instead of responding, Beomgyu shakes the can of spray paint ― white one, this time ― and starts spraying. Soobin knows what it is before he even finishes, can _see_ the heart forming by looking at the way it curves. Beomgyu likes drawing his hearts from bottom to top and Soobin kind of wants to scream. 

“ _What_ are you doing?” he whisper-screams. “Are you out of your mind?”

“I’m declaring my love for you,” Beomgyu replies and― well. 

Soobin freezes immediately, eyes tracking each flick of Beomgyu’s bony wrist as he scrawls the letters inside. _BG + SB_ he sees. The strings around his heart tighten frighteningly fast, and he wonders, once again, if Beomgyu knows what he’s doing and does it anyway. If Beomgyu knows of Soobin's crush on him and _does this anyway._ He stands there, still as a statue, and watches Beomgyu finish the last _B_ before turning around to look at him. 

For a change, Beomgyu isn’t smiling. Instead, he’s got the look on his face he gets sometimes when he thinks too hard about something ― lips pressed and brows drawn. The kind of look that tells Soobin he’s either thinking about a new song or what to eat for lunch, no in between. But this silence is different. This silence is something he can read as a preliminary, as the second before the night changes into a direction he hadn’t previously thought it could reach.

Then, a whistle.

It’s loud and ringing, night sparsely as lonely as it was when it was just the two of them in an abandoned boulevard. There’s a guard, in the corner of his vision, and Soobin can hear him yell at them but Beomgyu is faster. He springs to his feet and grabs Soobin’s wrist. The second whistle shocks his brain into working again just when Beomgyu pulls. Soobin is running after him now, wrist still wrapped tightly in between Beomgyu’s fingers. 

Before they know it, they’re laughing, the silence from before draining out all of his thoughts. He’s curious about the change of direction this night has taken, about the heart and their names inside it. This night has been, from start to finish, the longest night he’s ever lived and it’s _still_ far from over.

Years later, Soobin will wonder where that polaroid came from. He’ll stare at it, try to make out the blur of colours and light and he’ll never be able to recall how he’d taken it. But here’s a truth that stays between you, the reader, and Soobin’s conscious self, the narrator: he’d taken the picture right the second before they’d lost the guards and he hadn’t done it on purpose. The camera was entangled in his pockets and he’d clicked the shutter while pulling it out. The light leaking in it’s frame is from the curb outside, but the dark colour is mostly the fabric of the pants he wore that day. When Soobin looks at Beomgyu, wondering if he gets to take another chance to click a picture that isn’t as meaningless as this one, Beomgyu shakes his head and takes the polaroid from him.

They stand there afterward, hands on their knees and breathe stuttering, in the middle of a place neither of them recognize. His heart is racing and it isn’t solely because of the minutes they’ve spent weaving through identical sets of dark, leaking alleys and a city without light. 

Beomgyu smiles at him, throws his head back, laughs loud and guttural. Soobin, inexplicably, realises he’s never felt this euphoric in his life before. 

  
  
  
  


+

  
  
  
  
  


**04:00 | Town Square**

Difference between happiness and euphoria is that euphoria dies down after a while. They won’t get caught for vandalisation, no. They won’t even have to run away anymore. They’re still in each other’s company and they’re laughing like they never have known such joy, wheezing in between because they haven’t entirely caught their breath yet. Beomgyu looks at Soobin, face red and sweat lining his brows. In the entirely too dark alley, laughing because he’s losing it over what they just pulled and Soobin looks at Beomgyu the same way ― although his gaze has a more meaningful implication to it.

The heart. He wants to know what Beomgyu means. 

The impatience strikes him loud and clear of the kind he’s never felt before. And as always, like Beomgyu can tell what it means before he even says it. He coughs, laughter trailing off, and uses the sports band on his wrist to wipe his forehead. Like Soobin did before, he walks closer, taking his own sweet time. But Soobin is expecting him even before he reaches. Soobin doesn’t back away the way Beomgyu had, doesn’t frown at him. He holds the polaroid camera limp in one hand and his heart in the other. He waits for Beomgyu to come and call him out on it.

Here’s the truth, the reason why he’s telling this story: one day when he woke up, showered, dressed and went downstairs before school, he saw Beomgyu in their dining room helping his mother with breakfast looking like the kind of punk kid you’d only see in dramas. He had numerous piercings, most of which Soobin had been there to see happen. But the one that always stood out to him was the one on his helix, a dangling silver star. When Beomgyu saw him standing at the doorway, he stuck his tongue out and ducked to get Soobin’s mother to pat him on the back of his head. His mother had only rolled her eyes, watched the two of them with a smile, and ruffled his hair. Beomgyu’s presence at their breakfast table was normal, his jokes were welcome. His mother left early in the morning, before he even woke up, and it was a tradition for him to eat breakfast with them. But that day, in the light, lemon light, and a smile like the sun ― Beomgyu looked like he was always meant to be here, sitting beside Soobin and laughing with his family.

Beomgyu looked like he belonged there, in those moments ― and that’s the truth of this story. 

“Give me the camera,” Beomgyu says now. Soobin does, noticing the way it looks more at home in Beomgyu’s hands than it did in his own. “I know I told you I wanted to see tonight from your eyes, but I want to add something of mine in there too.”

That’s how it’s always been. Whatever is Soobin’s is half Beomgyu’s. It’s their _bro-code_ , the unspoken terms and agreements of their friendship. Even if they become something else, something more, this is a rule that will still be applicable. Whatever is Soobin’s is half Beomgyu’s, and whatever is Beomgyu’s is half Soobin’s. And this, the space in between them, is life as he has always known it. 

“It’s only fair.”

Beomgyu smiles at him.

He picks up the camera and at first it’s focused on him, but the moment Soobin blinks he turns. Several things happen at once; Soobin’s heart gapes, hollows and relaxes, Beomgyu pulls him closer and presses his lips to his (softly, like it isn’t even there), the shutter goes off in a second and the power comes back in the fourth. He feels it happen, sees the warmth of light flushing back into the avenue behind his eyelids, hears the gentle mechanical thrum of the grid working again. Like a video previously paused and now played, life begins again.

Beomgyu pulls away after seconds worth an entire eternity. It isn’t even a kiss but Soobin feels his heart take root in his body.

“Hi,” Beomgyu says, blinking his eyes open. His hands are trembling, Soobin can feel it from the back of his fingertips touching his collarbones. “I didn’t want to do it this way, but I guess now we can say our first kiss is captured on camera.”

Soobin blinks once, twice, and relaxes into a smile. He watches Beomgyu shake the film, the faint outline forming. The polaroid, when it forms, will only reveal the outline of two people wrapped in each other if you knew they were there in the first place. It captures the exact moment the grid powers, the second that comes in between the lamp post behind Beomgyu lighting up and the one behind Soobin lighting up. The frame will scatter that image, turn the place inside out, the dark behind Soobin will gnaw its teeth into the newly spilled light behind Beomgyu. A glitch in the matrix caught in time, one for both of them to keep. 

Soobin doesn’t know what to do. Fortunately, Beomgyu does. He pockets the camera and smiles. “Choi Soobin,” he says. “Follow me?”

Soobin hasn’t ever really been able to deny Beomgyu anything at all. 

  
  
  
  


+

  
  
  
  


**05:30 | The Sunrise Rooftop**

“Soobin-ah, you know you’re really pretty.”

Beomgyu calls this place the Sunrise Rooftop. He says it’s the best place in the city to view the sun rising. They had to bike a little to get here, and this time Soobin let Beomgyu take the lead. He watched the city instead. Previously flushed in the night, it now grew into something like jewels stuck to a violet velvet cloth as they left the township and moved towards the countryside. Soobin half thought, nestling his face over Beomgyu’s shoulders despite having to bend at an awkward angle to do so, that he’d take him to another apartment building ― maybe the top of an abandoned construction site. He had decided to let him, too tired and eyes almost closing. He has spent all night powered solely on adrenaline and what is left, now that all of it has drained, is fatigue and drowsiness. But he wanted to do this last thing, let Beomgyu take him to one last place, before he can go back to the comfort of his bed and hopefully drag Beomgyu with him.

Where they’re actually going, however, is a place Beomgyu and his skateboarding mates call the Sunrise Rooftop. It’s not a rooftop, not at all. It’s just a cliff protruding from the hills that surround the city, like a plate jutting out of an orderly dishwasher. It’s plain and green, boundaries barely decorated with red alarm stickers that would do nothing to prevent an eventual accident.

But for now, the sun is rising over the city. It’s five-thirty am and the sun is rising over the city and Beomgyu is standing beside him, holding his hands, and telling Soobin he thinks he’s pretty.

“Yeah?” Soobin says, turns around and tucks a strand of his hair behind his ear, this time without cringing. He likes doing that, he decides. He wants to be able to do that forever, wants to tuck his hair behind his ears and let his fingers linger at the sensitive skin there. Beomgyu moves to accommodate it, does it so instinctively Soobin knows he isn’t doing it on purpose. “What else do you think is pretty about me?”

“Arrogant,” he replies, eyes glinting with amusement, but continues anyway. “You care about people. You care about them so much that I can feel it sometimes, you know. Your care. You’re a kind person.”

Soobin’s hands trail away from his ears and find the nape of his neck. They rest there, easy. He lets Beomgyu’s gentle words settle in between them, wondering how Beomgyu _always_ knows just what to say. Soobin is good at writing things down, he’s good at expressing things without ever having tasted them. But Beomgyu is better with the smaller things, at the tinier details. Beomgyu remembers things no one else does, notices things that are normally unnoticeable. He always knows what to say, and how to say it, in a way no one else Soobin has been around can.

He’s comfortable. Beomgyu is comfortable, everything that is nice and peaceful condensed to form one person.

Maybe that’s why he tries to close the distance between them. He can suddenly not _stand_ the idea that they aren’t kissing. And they would be, by now, if Beomgyu didn’t stop him with a small snort and a finger pressed to his lips. “Before that,” he says. “Let me finish.”

Dawn is beginning to thin over the horizon. “You remember, back when we were kids ― like, twelve? Thirteen? We watched this movie, something apocalyptic. I can’t remember what it was called anymore, and you saw the world, completely dark and said _wow, I wonder what it would be like. Living like that._ And I thought it was weird, you know? Who would want to know what living at the end of the world would be like, but I understood, later on, that it wasn’t the end of the world but the absence of a middle that made it so interesting.”

Beomgyu pauses, pursues his lips. The golden light, the first rays, spill into his eyes. They turn them warm and honey. Beomgyu, in a world of green behind him and a sprawling city underneath. Beomgyu, comfort in a person. Beomgyu, in his arms, looking him in the eye, telling him he noticed. All those times, all those years ago, he noticed. 

Soobin smiles and looks down, knocks their forehead together. He can feel himself tear up a bit, which is stupid because there’s no reason to. But if you’re Choi Soobin and if you’re Choi Beomgyu, then everything about this moment is enough to make you cry. There’s a lot of reasons, a cumulation of thoughts ― but the one thing, the most important thing, is that out of the ninety-eight percent chance they would’ve never met, the two-percent chance they would won. 

“You’re so cheesy,” Soobin says.

Beomgyu laughs. “I’m not done yet.”

“All these years, you know, hyung. Soobin. All these years, I’ve wanted to tell you this. I wanted to tell you I liked you, that I wanted to hold your hand. I’m not sure when it started, exactly but I know I’ve been feeling it for a long time now and I was so afraid you’d be able to see it on me. I was afraid you could hear me, deep inside my mind, asking for you to pull me in after a long tiring day because you were the place I felt the safest in. And, even the end of the world isn’t much you know. It isn’t even half of what I want to give you, and it sounds lame when I say it out loud but I wanted you to see. I wanted you to see what I see here, what I mean when I say the end of the world.”

Beomgyu doesn’t need to say it out loud for Soobin to know what he means. The end of the world as the sun rises between them. The end, that is just another word for a beginning. The end, that is just the absence of a middle. The end, where they stay pressed to each other, above the city sprawling beneath them, where the wind blows the clearest in the summer and slices the woods in half.

“This is how I wanted to do this,” Beomgyu whispers softly. “I like you, Choi Soobin. I like you a whole lot. More than I like most people. More than I like my set of cameras. I like you, okay? Do you hear me?”

Soobin’s laughing but he’s also sort of tearing up and it’s so _fucking stupid_ but he manages to swallow the gauze in his throat to press a chaste kiss on Beomgyu’s lips. It’s slow and fleeting, but it's an actual kiss. Beomgyu’s lips are soft and taste like cheese, a little foul but that’s unnoticeable with the amount of water he’s been drinking all night. He pulls away and rests his head on Beomgyu’s again, fingers drawing slow circles on the cobble of his neck. 

“I like you too,” Soobin says. “I’ve liked you since the first time I saw you.”

Soobin will always love him. In the laughing silence of a school campus, the bright eyes of a ten year old in the breeze. In the rain, nearing the greytone and the broken cobble. Swallowing red chilli even if he hates spice, the carefully made dinner that is laid out for him with love. In moments between, in the people Beomgyu has grown into and out of over the years. In the place where the horizon meets the blue sky, somewhere you can walk and walk and never reach. In that place, at the end of the world, Soobin will always love him. 

But for now, he tells him he likes him and pulls him closer. He locks his hands behind his waist and Beomgyu reaches for his hair, instinctively. His mouth opens beneath Soobin’s, smooth and practised. Their lips find a rhythm like they’ve always known how to do this. Soobin feels his guts churn every time Beomgyu draws closer, when he pulls Soobin down to kiss him harder and bunches his hair at the back of his head. He feels his heart lurch when they pull apart and Beomgyu kisses his nose, his cheeks and then goes back to kissing around his lips till Soobin leans down to kiss him properly again.

It’s a new dawn.

  
  
  
  


+

  
  
  
  


**06:00 | By the Window**

Sometimes, fate is a sprained ankle and a coffee bite. Sometimes, it’s a basketball court and a food joint you frequented as kids. Sometimes, it’s a house, sitting right opposite one another so that every night when you look out you see him standing on the other window. Sometimes, it’s in the form of the prettiest boy you have ever seen. Sometimes it’s an unnoticed two percent, the glance you share when no one else is looking.

Beomgyu falls into bed with him when they return, all exhausted and ready to sleep. His mom calls from the kitchen, the whistle of a kettle stark in the morning. She asks if they want to eat something before they attack the bed and Beomgyu replies for both of them. He hears him say something like _no but please ring my mom_ but he’s too busy finding his room to care. He’s exhausted, bone deep. The night was long and tiring and he never wants to do it again. Or maybe, he does but not until so late and without prior planning. _Never,_ he thinks, _in the middle power cut._

His mother wakes up early to start her routine and Soobin admires her for that. He could never do it if he didn’t have to wake up for school regularly and before Beomgyu so he can wake the idiot up too. Beomgyu had once slept through his alarm and the first two slots. He’d arrived at the school two hours too late and said _it’s fashionable_ before dozing off on his own desk. Soobin has had to take the responsibility of waking him up, since then. 

At some point, late in the morning, Soobin wakes up again because of sunlight panning on his face. He realizes they’ve forgotten to pull the blinds on the window beside his bed, having talked for a long time even after succumbing to its comfort. Beomgyu had a lot to say. He told him all that he hadn’t imagined would’ve happened tonight, the way he hadn’t been sure if Soobin would say yes ― but the way he had known anyway. In return Soobin told him everything he’d felt since the beginning of the night, thumbed _2%_ on the back of his hand and kissed him all over his face till Beomgyu laughed and pushed him off.

The glare of the sun is terrible orange, and when Soobin moves to draw the curtains he feels a solid weight on his chest preventing him to. Beomgyu’s lying there, half of his body situated atop Soobin’s. Looking at him makes Soobin feel the cramp on his right, but Beomgyu looks so peaceful, face relaxed and vulnerable that Soobin doesn’t have the heart to wake him up. The light as it falls on him, is a golden halo on the side of his face. For a second Beomgyu would chide him for, Soobin thinks he can’t believe this ― all his life he’s woken up in various forms of the same position and he’s never once believed he could do this.

But he leans, presses a soft kiss to his forehead and realises he does get to do this. After all these years, he does get to do this.

Carefully, he moves Beomgyu aside. When Soobin is done settling him gently on the bed as he makes some kind of incoherent gurgling noise in response, he goes to pull the curtains over. 

That’s when his eyes fall on the camera, reminding him of the three more shots left inside it. He decides, carefully, to expend one more. The picture takes less than a second, and it’s of the sun. Soobin doesn’t wait to see it form, knowing he can just do it later. Instead he places it back and picks the black marker he’d seen beside it. Uncapping it creates a sound so loud he’s afraid it’d wake Beomgyu up, but Beomgyu sleeps like the dead and soon his face is but an empty canvas to Soobin’s ink.

Ten minutes later, Soobin sinks back into sleep in the glowing dark. Beomgyu’s face is graffitied to hell and back, but Beomgyu is still just as peacefully asleep. Soobin knows that when he wakes up, a few hours from now, he’ll threaten to burn down his room and set his reference textbooks on fire for doing what he did to his face. But for now Beomgyu is still warm and Soobin always falls asleep better when it’s with him. 

So on, so forth ― life resumes. 

  
  
  
  


+

  
  
  
  
  


**In the Present**

They’d still left one roll empty, Soobin remembers. The last one is a picture of him lying on the stairs from two weeks after the events of that night, the first time he’d seen Beomgyu holding a camera since then. 

It’s evening now and Soobin is still here, among so many boxes. The memories hit him raw, they make him feel everything he had felt ― however watered down ― in those moments. He can’t believe Beomgyu kept this, because when they’d moved into their college dorms there had been no space to carry unnecessary things with them. Which meant he’d had his parents mail it back to him after they’d moved into a house of their own. _This_ house of their own.

Through the years, despite the love they obviously have for each other, things have mellowed down. Soobin no longer whips up dreams of stars when he sees Beomgyu, feeling instead a quiet comfort that comes with the consistency of a safe place no matter how far away you throw it. But he remembers what it was like, back then, how it had felt to love Choi Beomgyu. Guitar notes, afternoon naps, scouring the night so you can find the end of the world. 

It isn’t a sense of loss that he feels. It’s a sense of fulfilment. 

It has been so long and they’re still here. They’ve fallen apart countless times, they’ve fought and made up and fought again countless times. They’ve said mean things, they’ve hurt each other, and they’ve pieced each other back together _countless times._ Soobin doesn’t feel his heart churn and flip when he thinks about Beomgyu, but he feels it flutter in quiet reassurance. It’s nice to remember how far they’ve come, it’s gratifying to think neither of them have let go.

“What are you doing?

Beomgyu’s voice comes from the hallway, he leans on the doorframe ― just as pretty as ever. He sees the box in Soobin’s hands and his eyes widen, looking away to find another thing to latch on to. But Soobin doesn’t particularly care about Beomgyu’s fumbling declarations of love right now. He rises to his feet, let’s the last polaroid fall to the floor as he leaves it behind. It takes seconds to close the distance between them. Soobin holds his face, leans closer, leaves a light peck.

“Idiot,” Beomgyu says, kisses his nose and then pulls him closer by the collar to kiss him better. On his wrist is a faint tattoo, a _2%_ engraved in a place he’ll always carry with him.

It makes sense, in hindsight, why Soobin is the more sentimental one out of the two of them. If Beomgyu was passionate _and_ sentimental they would be getting nowhere ― or maybe, they’d still be getting somewhere in a different way. Soobin refuses to believe there’s a ninety-eight percent chance of him never seeing Beomgyu in any version of the universe, and if he has to hold on to the unequivocal two-percent then he’ll hold on to it because this is where he lives now. In between kisses and days spent in the quiet knowledge of the company they hold for each other, this is where he’s made a home for himself now.

 _My heart takes root here,_ he thinks, when Beomgyu lets him go and they just stand there for a moment, lingering. Beomgyu's eyes are closed, his forehead cold against Soobin's. Then, Beomgyu pushes him away shoves the boxes to berate him for the dust that’s accumulated everywhere. _I choose to put my love down here everyday._

Over and over again, he thinks. The last ten years and the next, and even after all of that is gone by. Over and over again, until he can hold on. Over and over again, until even forever is too short of a time to count. 

"Are you listening to me, hyung?" Beomgyu scowls. "It's not funny! How are we supposed to clean this up by the day after?"

If home is a person, he thinks, then this ― Beomgyu in the middle of a chaos only he can organise ― is his home. This is his _home._

**Author's Note:**

> honestly idk why the light was out 4 so long
> 
> 1\. the pictures used are in an [unsplash](https://unsplash.com/collections/96696757/ten%2C-ten) album [ane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hauntplace) made  
> 2\. [#unequivocally](https://unrealizing.tumblr.com/tagged/unequivocally) is the tag i use for this fic on tumblr  
> 3\. [it's beomgyu who is getting prettier](https://64.media.tumblr.com/37903cdcf43afe0b0c128f8d7cd93317/4c2201af32408332-65/s540x810/961c27f7029bdda494d23b4d3899ac0349009bf6.gif)  
> 


End file.
